The Government of Canada is maintaining its commitment to a strong immigration program and will welcome 300,000 immigrants in 2017.

Immigration plays an important role in keeping Canada competitive in a global economy. It helps offset the impacts of an aging population and the fact that the number of people in Canada’s labour force will soon be in decline. In fact, immigration will soon account for all net labour force growth as the number of retirements outpaces the number of Canadian youth joining the labour market. For these reasons, the Government has established 300,000 as a new baseline for permanent resident admissions with the majority of these selected as economic immigrants.

Within this plan, the number of permanent residents selected in economic programs will increase. Though planned admissions of resettled refugees will decrease when compared to the extraordinary target in 2016, they will continue to remain among the highest in Canada’s history and will be more than double the target in 2015. Maintaining the Government’s commitment to family reunification, the 2017 plan also sees an increase to family class levels, which will help to reduce processing times and reunite more families.

Overall, the plan balances high immigration levels with improvements to the immigration system, including reducing backlogs.

The approach to the 2017 levels plan was guided by feedback from Canadians gathered over the summer months and from provinces and territories.